Theater: Best of 1981: Theater

Crimes of the Heart. Three sisters, nurtured in Southern gothic
grotesquerie, induce spasms of laughter in Beth Henley's
Pulitzer-prizewinning drama. Dreamgirls. A pearl in the strand of
notable U.S. musicals. There is dazzling elegance in Theoni V.
Aldredge's costumes, and a young belter named Jennifer Holliday can
start, stop and steal a show. (See above.) The Dresser. Paul Rogers
plays a decrepit provincial Shakespearean actor-manager; Tom Courtenay,
his valet. In double image, they are Lear and his Fooland both are
magnificent.

Key Exchange. A trio of free spirits have wry and funny flings at love
in the modern mode. A dandy playwright...